Mrs. Cartwright's intuition had been perfectly right.
Jack Awdas was up during the raid over London. He was up to some purpose, as his comrades and three other airmen (prisoners of war) could tell.
But here is his own version of the affair, as told by him, on the following day, to his young wife.
"When that warning came through, you see, I felt that it was for me too. I don't know what my own idea was when I went off with old Ross. He said, 'What the something do you want to come along for?' I said, 'All right; shut up.' I didn't know, you know. Queer, wasn't it? All I knew was that I had got to go too, instead of bringing you back here as I'd thought.... I'd got to leave you, girl."
She listened, leaning back now in his happy arms. She listened, all eyes. His own blue eyes had been deep in hers, locked to them with the lover's look that is another embrace. But now he took them from hers. He glanced aside and away, and into Jack Awdas's eyes there crept back one of those two other looks which were characteristic of him. It was the "yonderly" look that sees what is not for all to see.
"Somehow," he said, "I knew I just couldn't stay with you. I'd got to go up, and Lord only knew how it was going to be managed, or how I was going to get out of the 'drome in time, even. There wasn't a taxi in sight. Ross and I walked on to the Honeycomb, or half ran, half walked. Going up Whitehall he said, 'Jack, you darned fool, go back; what's wrong?' I said, 'Nothing; shut up, old thing, if you don't mind.'
"In the courtyard of the Honeycomb we nearly ran into a tiny little dispatch-rider girl with a side-car. I didn't know until just now that it was young Brown's widow that he was going to marry, that we'd heard about at dinner! She'd brought some man in, and was just starting up; I said to her, 'Where are you for?' She said, 'Home! and time, too.' 'Where's home?' said I, and I believe she told me it was Baker Street.... But just as I was asking her I began to see what I'd got to do. It began to come to me then, d'you see?
"I said to the girl, 'Look here, I'm sorry, you can't go home yet. You've got to drive me out to my 'drome, and I told her where that was. Half an hour's ride into the country. We did it in less. I told her I'd got to get to my 'bus, and that she'd got to go hell-for-leather; and we did it in less....
"You see, I'd got to take that machine across at ten o'clock next morning. Had to: duty. (You knew about that, of course.) But if I could only get her up a few hours before that! I thought.... There she was, waiting. There were dozens of our chaps up already, I knew. Here was I——and I couldn't stand it, somehow. Not last night. Just because it was that night. It would have spoilt it. You see, don't you? Yes; I thought you would. I wouldn't think of you then; except to think 'It's her I'm going to give Them.' I don't even know what 'them' meant——(This sounds such rot, girl, that I couldn't possibly tell anybody else, but there you are.... I won't kiss you again until I've told you the end of this.)